title: A novel retron of Vibrio parahaemolyticus is closely related to retron-Vc95 of Vibrio cholerae.
abstract: Some bacteria produce a satellite RNA-DNA complex termed msDNA, multicopy single-stranded DNA. In this report, msDNA from Vibrio parahaemolyticus, a cause of acute gastroenteritis, was identified and named msDNA-Vp96. The retron element containing the ret gene, encoding the reverse transcriptase (RT) that is responsible for msDNA production, was cloned and characterized. Comparison of msDNA-Vp96 and msDNA-Vc95, from Vibrio cholerae, showed a high level of sequence similarity. We exchanged the two ret genes to examine whether msDNA was produced by the RT from different sources. We found that RT-Vp96 of V. parahaemolyticus was able to synthesize msDNA-Vc95 of V. cholerae and vice versa. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report that RT from different bacterial species can synthesize msDNA.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Food Microbiology and Hygiene, Graduate School of Biosphere Science, Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima 739-8528, Japan.
authors.forename: Toshi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Shimamoto
authors.forename: Ashraf M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Ahmed
authors.forename: Tadashi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Shimamoto
mesh_terms: D004277:DNA, Single-Stranded / Q000235:genetics*; D012329:RNA, Bacterial / Q000235:genetics*; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D014734:Vibrio cholerae / Q000235:genetics*; D014736:Vibrio parahaemolyticus / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D004277:DNA, Single-Stranded; D012329:RNA, Bacterial; C058681:msDNA